OK, in real time (January 8th, 2012) I am dealing with a bit more stress than I can handle…so thought I’d better escape back to the trip…
This leg of the trip would take us to Whitehorse. Since it is a pretty easy drive from Teslin to Whitehorse, we weren’t in a great rush to leave…
So wandered down to the lake in the morning, and over to the bird banding station…
The ‘banders’ were busy at work. By the way they have a blog as well…I can’t remember the exact name but googling Teslin Bird Banding would no doubt take you to it…if I ever remember how I will add it to my list of blogs I follow…
This is one of the assistants photographing a Warbler before she let it go…
the mist nets were out and catching birds…
Here an Alder Flycatcher…the birds are very carefully untangled and popped into little cloth drawstring bags, then taken back to be weighed and measured and banded before being released..
They did comment on the numbers of Black-capped Chickadees that they were catching…said they weren’t sure where they were all coming from…and this trend seems to have held down south as we have a lot of Chickadees this year… Reluctantly we left the banding station and headed west along the Alaska Highway…
Pulled into another territorial campground – this one on Squanga Lake. This proved to be quite the hot spot for not only birds…
Boreal Chickadee…
Yellow-rump Warbler…
AND Rusty Blackbird! There had been a pair of them right down at the lakes edge…but they flew almost as soon as I realized they were there…
I’ve really cropped this one. This is a bird whose numbers are declining and is a rare sighting…
Also want to point out this. This is a bat box and Yukon seems to be way ahead of us in promoting their population of bats. Judging by the droppings this box was being well used…and bats, of course, eat mosquitoes!
What was just as exciting here were the mushrooms….
this one, I think is a ‘Rosy Russula’
here is something different again…growing amongst the Bastard Toadflax and Labrador Tea..
and something else again…. Tore ourselves away from the mushrooms and continued on, bypassing the turn off to Atlin this time but taking the longer route….
Stopping at the Tagish River for lunch…this is looking north at the highway bridge with the community of Tagish on the far shore…
and this is looking south…you can see the sky is clearing and the weather is improving…
This is one of the signs in the park and campground that is located here…
after lunch we continued on…are now just about approaching the junction where you can turn left and head to Alaska, or right and head to Whitehorse….a Grizzley Bear was up on this hillside – the first ‘wild animal’ other than a squirrel, that we’d seen…unfortunately, no picture.
Turned right, headed for Whitehorse and stopped at the Carcross Desert…
then continued on past Emerald Lake…..eventually arriving in Whitehorse where we elected to stay in a private RV park as it was time to do some laundry and find some WiFi so we could contact people back home. Paid for a site, then headed into town to do a good grocery shopping as this would be the last place where you can really stock up….then back to the RV park to do the ‘chores’.
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